The New York Times reports the following story:

MARABA, Syria — Back home in Iraq, Umm Hiba’s daughter was a devout schoolgirl, modest in her dress and serious about her studies. Hiba, who is now 16, wore the hijab, or Islamic head scarf, and rose early each day to say the dawn prayer before classes.

But that was before militias began threatening their Baghdad neighborhood and Umm Hiba and her daughter fled to Syria last spring. There were no jobs, and Umm Hiba’s elderly father developed complications related to his diabetes.

Desperate, Umm Hiba followed the advice of an Iraqi acquaintance and took her daughter to work at a nightclub along a highway known for prostitution. “We Iraqis used to be a proud people,” she said over the frantic blare of the club’s speakers. She pointed out her daughter, dancing among about two dozen other girls on the stage, wearing a pink silk dress with spaghetti straps, her frail shoulders bathed in colored light.

As Umm Hiba watched, a middle-aged man climbed onto the platform and began to dance jerkily, arms flailing, among the girls.

“During the war we lost everything,” she said. “We even lost our honor.” She insisted on being identified by only part of her name — Umm Hiba means mother of Hiba.

For anyone living in Damascus these days, the fact that some Iraqi refugees are selling sex or working in sex clubs is difficult to ignore.

Even in central Damascus, men freely talk of being approached by pimps trawling for customers outside juice shops and shawarma sandwich stalls, and of women walking up to passing men, an act unthinkable in Arab culture, and asking in Iraqi-accented Arabic if the men would like to “have a cup of tea.”

By day the road that leads from Damascus to the historic convent at Saidnaya is often choked with Christian and Muslim pilgrims hoping for one of the miracles attributed to a portrait of the Virgin Mary at the convent. But as any Damascene taxi driver can tell you, the Maraba section of this fabled pilgrim road is fast becoming better known for its brisk trade in Iraqi prostitutes.

Many of these women and girls, including some barely in their teens, are recent refugees. Some are tricked or forced into prostitution, but most say they have no other means of supporting their families. As a group they represent one of the most visible symptoms of an Iraqi refugee crisis that has exploded in Syria in recent months.

According to the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, about 1.2 million Iraqi refugees now live in Syria; the Syrian government puts the figure even higher.

Given the deteriorating economic situation of those refugees, a United Nations report found last year, many girls and women in “severe need” turn to prostitution, in secret or even with the knowledge or involvement of family members. In many cases, the report added, “the head of the family brings clients to the house.”

[Read the rest of the article.]

Click here for another story involving Iraqi women and sexual slavery.

The News features a horrifying story by Shakeel Anjum, who reports:

ISLAMABAD: The irony is chilling. Even before they could bloom into flowers, teenaged flower-selling girls are being trafficked to some Middle East countries ostensibly for employment but only to be used for physical pleasure.

The poor girls, who sell flowers on Islamabad roads, are being trafficked on passports bearing fake names by a new racket as startling details of the ordeal of one such girl reaches before the Supreme Court of Pakistan (SCP).

[…]

The main accused Parveen lured the young flower vender to Muridke, a town near Lahore, impersonating her as real sister under the name Shama. She, later, took Nazia to Nadra centre and got her a CNIC as Shama, daughter of her (Perveen’s) own father Muhammad Shafi. Later, Nazia was issued passport on the basis of this fake CNIC. She was sent abroad and was sold for prostitution in Dubai.

[…]

“The racket has smuggled about 40 young girls to the Middle East for prostitution,” Hashmi added. The police arrested all the nominated accused — Rafaqat, resident of District Narowal, Parveen, Anees Ahmed and Allah Rakha r/o District Sheikhupura.

The gang members, during questioning, confessed Nazia was enticed by Parveen when she used to sell flowers in Saddar area and district courts area of Rawalpindi. A Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) official said the Prevention and Control of Human Trafficking Ordinance (PACHTO) 2002 empowers the agency to enforce the ordinance and break into the nets of human smugglers and traffickers.

[Read the full article.]

Wikipedia has it wrong:

In the contemporary Middle East, sexual slavery is uncommon. However, transportation and trafficking of these women does exist there. Iran, Israel, and Turkey have a significant sex trade-much of it involving women from Eastern Europe and poor areas of Northern India.

Sexual slavery is very common in the Middle East as this site proves, especially if we go by their own definition of sexual slavery which includes “forced prostitution.”

Secondly, the majority of it does not involve Eastern European women or “poor areas of Northern India” (how vague is that?), but rather from places such as Thailand, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and quite recently Iraq and Iran. Moreover, Dubai has one of the worst cases of forced prostitution (and migrant rights abuses in general.)

The following article is two years old, but the situation is not much different today than it was back then.

Excerpt taken from “Asian Sex Gazette,” which features inappropriate material (visit at your own risk.)

‘There have been some reports that indicate Iraqi women may be subjected to sexual exploitation in prostitution in Syria at the hands of Iraqi criminal networks, but those reports have not been confirmed,’ the report said.

The going rate for an Iraqi prostitute is 10,000 Iraqi dinars ($7), according to The Toronto Star.

Though some women are adopting prostitution to feed their families, others are being sold against their will.

The Independent interviewed two women who were abducted and then sold into prostitution.

‘Because I was not married, I was sold for $6,000, and Sajeeda for $3,000. My hymen had a price - this is when we realized that we were going to have to do bad things with men. We were terrified,’ one of the women told The Independent.

A growing concern of many humanitarian organizations is the young ages of Iraqi prostitutes. In an article for Salon magazine, an outreach organization for refugee children, Good Shepherd Nunnery, in Damascus said they had lost many of their students.

‘In the past year, many of the children attending the nunnery`s learning center suddenly disappeared’ said a sister at the school.

Read more. The article also describes how prostitution in Iraq serves as a last resort to some women.

From SOS Sexisme -

Trafficking in Eastern European women is a huge business, bringing from $ 5 billion to $ 22 billion a year to the sex industry’s tycoons. The risks are lower and the profits higher than from drug smuggling, according to a recent report by the British Helsinki Human Rights Group. A woman can be resold and utilized until she dies or goes mad, which is often the case, said Marie-Jose Ragab, president of the Dulles Area Chapter of the National Organization for Women.

She said worse lies ahead for those who reach Turkey. There they are delivered to a market in the Turkish city of Trebizond, where they are literally bought and sold as slaves.

From Bosnia to Israel, women are sold for anything from $800 to $15,000, depending on the quality of the “product” and remain obligated by large debts for their transportation and the arrangement of documents, according to Human Rights Watch.

This is a blog post by Reem George, whom I recently contacted about this site. This has been featured in Arabisto:

This is my first blog, so I decided to write about a subject I am passionate about, and one I spent months researching and even dreaming about at some point.

Why sex trafficking? Is it an act of desperation by those who sell women and girls around the globe? How does the mind come to a point where it accepts to carryout a crime so heinous, so despicable, and so unjustifiable?

In the mind of a criminal, who is looking to make some money, human trafficking and especially sex trafficking is one that outweighs all the profits made from drug trafficking per say. This is simply because women who are trafficked can be “recycled” over and again and can be bought and sold by one criminal to another.

So what does human trafficking have to do with the Middle East? The problem has always existed in the area, but in deeply religious societies, the problem never gets the attention that it deserves. Human trafficking is caused by political and economic upheavals and instability in the country of origin, widespread poverty, chronic unemployment, lack of economic opportunities, marginalization of women and girls, lack of education, rapid modernization leading to the loss of cultural values, development of materialistic values, break of family ties, and social and cultural practices that devalue women and girls.

Through transnational organized networks, criminals take advantage of declining conditions and prey on poor women, who are often displaced victims of war and lure them by work opportunities abroad. Women are generally bought, sold or auctioned to brothels and private buyers as sexual slaves. The crime of sex trafficking is spreading in countries such as the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Lebanon and Yemen.

In Tehran alone, there are over 87,000 prostitutes on the streets, most of them forced into the business, with some being as young as nine years of age. Following the invasion and occupation in Iraq, hundreds of Iraqi women as well as Iraqi boys were kidnapped and sold into slavery in Syria and Yemen. In the United Arab Emirates, women are being trafficked from countries in Eastern Europe and Russia, and as far as China, India, and Indonesia.

The pattern of sexual slavery has not changed in the Middle East today, but rather has increased in modern times, especially in the more industrialized nations of the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Kuwait. The business employs modern technology and takes advantage of porous borders and corrupt leadership. This increase resulted as the appeal for the old world desires was coupled with the lures of business and profit-making opportunities in the Middle East. The temptations of “business and pleasure” have attracted tourists, businessmen, criminal gangs and sexual predators alike from around the world.

This is a global phenomenon that is occurring at our doorstep, in every country, in every city, and it is possibly happening in your street at this moment. I live in San Diego, close to the busiest border in the world. I am not worried about “terrorists” crossing these borders. I am worried about girls as young as nine, being kidnapped and brought here against their will and made to lose their dignity and childhood, all for money and power.

In the Middle East, where civil wars are raging on in Iraq and the Sudan, and intense fighting in Palestine is prolonged by the lack of cooperation, the issue of sex trafficking becomes even more difficult to control. But, who is listening? It is terrorism that people are more worried about, this war between powerful men, and not human trafficking. Trafficking is a war between men and vulnerable human beings, most of whom are women. They are our mothers and daughters, sisters and nieces. Are you listening?

An excellent piece. It makes people aware of an issue that should be important to us all, but isn’t. Unfortunately, the majority of us are not listening, simply because there aren’t enough people talking and writing about it.

Hi, Natalia Antonova here.

A few years back, I conducted an interview with a wonderful human being, Tetyana Metyura. Ms. Metyura is an associate of La Strada, an NGO devoted to the struggle against human trafficking. We met in my hometown of Kiev, Ukraine.

The trafficking of Eastern European women to the Middle East was, and continues to be, of special interest to me; after all, while I was in Jordan in the summer of 2005, a number of people asked me: “Why do so many prostitutes in Arab countries come from places like your native Ukraine, Nat? Do you know what your name, Natasha [a diminutive of Natalia] actually implies?”

I wanted to highlight this problem for my Jordanian friends, and for anyone else who might ask similar questions. I also wanted to understand how things ended up going so terribly wrong, both for my fellow women and for the people who would sink so low as to engage in the soul-crushing slave trade. I didn’t get the answer to all my existential questions - but Ms. Metyura was a well of useful knowledge nonetheless.

Here is an excerpt from the interview:

…I was surprised when I came across Middle Eastern stereotypes of trafficked women. Some of the people believed that women who are involved in the sex-trade are the guilty party. At the same time they forgot that victims of trafficking have an unlimited workday, suffer from violence, and work under the constant threat of force. They are one of the most vulnerable groups out there.

…Of course, here at La Strada we refuse to generalize about people based on their nationalities, there are plenty of Israelis and other Middle Easterners who are interested in helping trafficked persons, not hurting them further…

You can read the entire thing here.

An article from the JPost lists Israel as one of the worst human traffickers -

A report released this week by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has cited Israel as among the top destinations in the trafficking of human beings, either for sexual exploitation or forced labor.

Entitled “Trafficking in Persons: Global Patterns,” the report claims that, “virtually every country in the world is affected by the crime of human trafficking.” However, Israel, along with nine countries, was named as the worst offenders of illegal trade in human beings.

“The fact that this form of slavery still exists in the 21st century shames us all,” announced UNODC Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa on the organization’s Web site. “Governments need to get serious about identifying the full extent of the problem so they can get serious about eliminating it.”

In Israel, Haifa feminist center Isha L’Isha, one of the human rights organizations active in the fight against the trafficking of women, welcomed the report’s findings and was hopeful that it would force the government and relevant authorities to take more action against this crime.

Tal Eisenberg, the organization’s legal advisor and coordinator for the center’s Fighting Against Trafficking in Women project told The Jerusalem Post, “It is excellent that the United Nations has recognized that there is such a problem in Israel. I hope that we can learn from the report and that the government will now take more notice of the problem.” She said that many countries did not even know that trafficking takes place within their borders and that Israeli rights organizations had made great progress in combating the problem.

Executive Director of Amnesty International Israel, Amnon Vidan said that the Israeli authorities had to deal with the problem before it happened, by stopping the transit of women across the border with Egypt.

The UNODC report identified 127 countries of origin, 98 transit countries and 137 destination countries. It stated that the vast majority of human trafficking was in women and was for the purpose of sexual exploitation, with roughly 20 percent of the trade being in forced labor.

The report, which was based on 113 individual sources such as government documents, research by national criminal justice organizations, Interpol, research institutes and news agencies, suggested that, “the best way of addressing the demand side of trafficking human beings is to demolish the markets generating profits to the criminals. This would require identification of traffickers in order to be able to investigate trafficking cases, and prosecute and convict offenders. Unfortunately, relatively few cases are prosecuted successfully resulting in a very small number of convictions.”

Some good news in a tragic case:

HEADLINE: THAILAND/MIDDLE EAST - A suspected human trafficker has been arrested for allegedly luring women to the sex trade in the Middle East, Thai police said. Officers of the Suppression of Crimes Against Children and Women Monday arrested La-iad Kaewdee, 32, in Thai central province of Samut Prakan. She has been charged with being a member of a gang procuring women for prostitution, a police source was quoted on Monday by Thai news group The Nation as saying.

Police said La-iad had admitted the charges but claimed she had only been involved in duping one woman. Division deputy commander Colonel Jaruwat Vaisaya said a victim who escaped from a brothel in an unnamed Middle Eastern country reported La-iad after being assisted back to Thailand by the Foreign Ministry.

The victim alleged La-iad lured her to the Middle East with the promise of a well-paying job in a restaurant. When she arrived her passport was seized and she was forced to work as a prostitute. The gang claimed she owed 100,000 baht (about 2,780 U.S. dollars) for transport costs, said the report.

“We estimate up to 100 women remain in the Middle East being forced to work as prostitutes,” Jaruwat said. Most of the victims are from the North and Northeast of Thailand. Human trafficking “networks” go to different places and lure women with promises of good jobs as domestic helpers or in restaurants. (Xinhua General News Service January 15, 2007)

Source: Gender Watchers

100 only from Thailand, perhaps. But the number of women being forced into prostitution in the region go up to thousands, and are being smuggled from various parts of the world, mostly Asia and Eastern Europe.